Melrose Place

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Melrose Place
Genre	Soap opera
Creator(s)	Darren Star
Starring	in alphabetical order Linden Ashby (1997-1998) Josie Bissett (1992-1997, 1998-1999) Thomas Calabro David Charvet (1997-1998, recurring otherwise) Marcia Cross (1995-1997, recurring otherwise) Kristin Davis (1995-1996, recurring otherwise) Rob Estes (1996-1999) Brooke Langton (1996-1998) Laura Leighton (1994-1997, recurring otherwise) Amy Locane (1992) Jamie Luner (1997-1999) Alyssa Milano (1997-1998, recurring otherwise) John Haymes Newton (1998-1999) Lisa Rinna (1996-1998) Kelly Rutherford (1997-1999, recurring otherwise) Doug Savant (1992-1997) Grant Show (1992-1997) Andrew Shue (1992-1998) Courtney Thorne-Smith (1992-1997) Jack Wagner (1995-1999, recurring otherwise) Vanessa Williams (1992-1993) Daphne Zuniga (1992-1996) special guest star Heather Locklear as Amanda (1993-1999, recurring otherwise)
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	226
Production
Running time	44 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	FOX
Original run	July 8, 1992 – May 24, 1999
Links
IMDb profile

Melrose Place is an American television series that ran between 1992 and 1999, created by Darren Star for the FOX network. In late 2004 the network SOAPnet began repeating the show.

Contents 1 Show history and description 2 Models, Inc. 3 Cast 4 Episodes 5 Legacy 5.1 Trivia 5.2 GALA Committee 6 International 7 DVD releases 8 External links

[edit] Show history and description

A spinoff from Beverly Hills 90210 (though not featuring any permanent cast members crossing over), Melrose Place is a small apartment block in the West Hollywood district of Los Angeles where several young singles and the occasional couple reside. In the story, 90210 teenager Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) pursues one resident, the hunky, brooding carpenter Jake Hanson (Grant Show), but she returns to her zip code when she realizes they are from different worlds.

During the first season, the show was a relatively earnest serial drama focused on how young people come to Los Angeles to realize their dreams. Michael (Thomas Calabro) and Jane Mancini (Josie Bissett) were originally the stable couple in the apartment building, with Michael a sympathetic doctor and Jane a budding fashion designer. Their neighbors were flatmates Alison (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and Billy (Andrew Shue), who later began a love affair, and Matt Fielding (Doug Savant), a gay man who had no love life whatsoever during the first season.

Other original cast members were Rhonda (Vanessa A. Williams), an African-American aerobics instructor, and blonde, budding starlett Sandy Harling (Amy Locane). Sandy was written out after 13 episodes. Rhonda was removed after the first season. Early in the show's run, photographer Jo Reynolds (Daphne Zuniga) arrived from New York to escape her alcoholic husband. Initially tough, Jo would eventually soften some and enjoy an on-again, off-again romance with Jake.

Producers were faced with mediocre ratings and attempted to revamp the series during the first season. This was achieved mainly through the first-season arrival of former Dynasty vixen Heather Locklear as the scheming and assertive Amanda Woodward. Initially intended as a high-profile guest, Amanda was retained on the series on a permanent basis. Amanda soon bought the apartment building, became a vice-president for the company where she and fellow resident Alison worked, and had affairs with many of the male characters, starting with Billy. During the first season, the show became less of an episodic series, and more of a soap opera with ongoing, interwoven stories.

Michael Mancini started cheating on Jane with the unstable Dr. Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross). He later divorced Jane and married Kimberly, and then had a fling with Jane's irresponsible sister Sydney (Laura Leighton). This established Michael as the beleagured cad and schemer he would remain until the end of the show. Like Michael, Sydney was presented as somewhat a chaotic schemer, often outwitted and double-crossed by others she was attempting to trick. Her various blunders forced her into various ill-advised career moves including briefly working as a stripper and as a prostitute. Ultimately, Michael was the only original character to appear through the show's entire run; Jane took a brief hiatus but returned for the final season.

The storylines began to heat up when a drunken Michael crashed the car, sending him and Kimberly tumbling down a ravine. Kimberly's angry, grieving mother sent word that her critically injured daughter had died in a medical facility in Ohio. Once Sydney learned Michael had eluded potential manslaughter charges because Matt faked Michael's blood alcohol test results, she blackmailed Michael into marrying him. But her plan was ultimately foiled when Kimberly re-appeared, alive and well, revealing that her mother had lied to keep Michael away. Kimberly returned as a more ruthless, dangerous unstable individual, with her sanity negatively affected by brain surgery.

Jake had numerous relationships with Melrose Place residents, including most of the female regulars (Sandy, Jo, Amanda, Sydney, Jane, Alison). He bought a bike shop, which burned down, and later bought Shooters, the Melrose gang's primary hangout spot for the first five seasons. Matt would have the fewest love affairs of any character in the series. In contrast with the numerous and steamy love scenes of all the other characters, Matt's sole kissing scene with a man was censored by FOX.

Alison and Billy were roommates before they were lovers, but they broke up, reconciled and planned a wedding set in the building's courtyard. But Alison fled their wedding after flashing back to childhood sexual abuse. Alison subsequently struggled with alcoholism and Billy, fed up, married rich brat Brooke (Kristin Davis), and the three wound up working at D&D together. Alison eventually married Brooke's father Hayley (Perry King), and Brooke and Hayley interfered with each other's marriages. Hayley eventually discovered he was financially ruined and, during a trip with Alison, he drowned after falling from his yacht. Billy broke up with Brooke, leading to her suicide attempt, followed by her accidental drowning in the building's swimming pool.

Meanwhile, Jo would give birth to a son after killing the baby's father, Reed, in self-defense. She then battled Reed's parents for custody of the child, a struggle that was complicated by Kimberly's gambit to steal the baby away from Jo. She later assists the Reeds in recovering the infant. After a shootout with her child's grandparents, Jo begrudgingly gave up the baby for adoption in order to protect it from the chaotic power play between her and the Reeds.

In 1995, Jack Wagner, known for his role as Frisco Jones on General Hospital, arrived as the charismatic and corrupt Dr. Peter Burns. Peter tormented Amanda, nearly killing her on the operating table before he was arrested. But for all his crimes, Peter was the first man to be the equal of ice queen Amanda. Sensing the chemistry, producers quickly made Wagner a contract player, and Amanda/Peter would remain a popular on-again, off-again couple for the remainder of the series.

These storylines, along with Amanda's catty one-liners, sexy-but-tough wardrobe and man-stealing helped make Melrose a guilty pleasure for many millions of viewers around the world. Within a few seasons, Amanda had hooked up with every male character (except the gay Matt Fielding) from the first five seasons. Many highly dramatic cliffhanger situations were also included in the series. The show's popularity led to a rash of similar nighttime serials about sexy, powerful women, such as Models, Inc., Savannah, Pacific Palisades, Central Park West and Sex and the City.

Kimberly endured as the love/hate of Michael's life and a formidable villain to all for several seasons. Her antics provided many jolts to the audience, such as her pulling off her wig to study her shaved, scarred head in the bathroom mirror; having her wig torn off in view of hospital staff by Matt; struggling to contain multiple personalities; learning combat skills at an intense survivalist camp; constructing a photo collage of Melrose Place residents with their eyes gouged out; and detonating four bombs in the apartment complex in the third-season cliffhanger.

The third season cliffhanger does not end with the explosion, however; the ending was quickly altered due to the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in that same month (May of 1995). After Kimberly plants the bombs, the residents of Melrose Place rush out to the courtyard, and the episode ends with Kimberly pushing the detonator button as she warns the residents that, "this isn't what it looks like...it's worse". The four explosions destroy half the apartment complex, killing one person and maiming another in an incendiary fourth-season opener.

By the fifth season, the series seemed to have peaked, with Amanda softening and Kimberly's long-running reign of terror finally running out of steam, and there was a growing consensus that the show could no longer shock or entertain viewers as it once had. Producers promised the fifth season would include more character development and less convoluted plot twists. After a season finale where Jo vacillated over leaving L.A. to join her new lover in Bosnia, the new season quickly explained that the now-absent Jo had indeed left town. Alison started a relationship with Jake, while Billy begins to pursue newcomer Samantha (Brooke Langton). A slate of other characters was introduced, such as hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Megan (Kelly Rutherford), restaurateur Kyle (Rob Estes), his vengeful, lush-lipped wife (and Peter's sister-in-law), Taylor (Lisa Rinna), and Michael's bratty sister Jennifer (Alyssa Milano). After a brief trist with Sydney, Kyle soon took up with Amanda and, as ratings began to falter, Amanda morphed from vixen to victim, being rescued or assaulted or teary-eyed on a frequent basis.

This season also saw many enduring characters leave the series. Alison fooled Jake into thinking she had fallen off the wagon so that he would reunite with the mother of his long-lost child, and the two left town separately. After dominating storylines for several seasons Kimberly quietly died of a brain aneurysm. And at the end of the season, Samantha's jailbird father accidentally killed Sydney by running her down in a car right after her wedding to Craig (David Charvet).

By the time Matt left Melrose Place at the beginning of the sixth season, he remarked that he wanted to say goodbye but "there's no one left." Indeed, more characters had to be introduced to revive the series, including violent Dr. Brett Cooper (Linden Ashby) and his seductive ex-wife, Lexi Sterling (Jamie Luner). The focal point of the season was the troubled relationship between Kyle and Amanda, who returned to her nasty ways after creating her own advertising agency. By the end of the season (the show's shortest), Craig had committed suicide and the characters of Billy, Sam, Taylor, Jennifer, and Coop were written off the show.

As the seventh and final season began, Matt was killed in a car accident on the way to dinner at Kyle's supper club. The loss of yet another original cast member in such a short period of time upset the show's devoted cult of fans and hastened the program's downward spiral. Bissett returned to the series in 1998, and storylines centered on her early relationship with Michael. New characters were hurriedly drafted into the series, Ryan McBride (John Haymes Newton) and Eve Cleary (Rena Sofer), had difficulty gaining a following during this period of cast instability. Overall, the series seemed unable to handle the high number of cast changes in such a short time, and its popularity never recovered.

Amanda remained a leading character through the end of the series. And Lexi Sterling (Jamie Luner) transformed from a misguided rich girl to a scheming but popular super-bitch who succeeded in purchasing the Melrose Place building and driving Amanda out of business via her own agency, Sterling-Conway. Meanwhile, the show paired the long-suffering Jane with Kyle (the actors were real-life spouses) and returned to the Amanda-Peter coupling. By early 1999 FOX decided that the ratings erosion as well as the extremely high production costs —- it was said that they could have filmed an entire pilot just on Heather Locklear's salary —- warranted cancellation.

[edit] Models, Inc.

In early 1994, former Dallas star Linda Gray guest-starred as Amanda's frosty mother, Hillary Michaels. Hillary ran a modeling agency, and viewers were invited to follow Hillary to her own series, Models, Inc.. In spite of the presence of Gray and other names such as Emma Samms, poor ratings caused FOX to pull the plug in spring 1995.

[edit] Cast

• Thomas Calabro as Dr. Michael Mancini (1992-1999)
• Josie Bissett as Jane Andrews (1992–1997, 1998–1999)
• Andrew Shue as Billy Campbell (1992–1998)
• Courtney Thorne-Smith as Alison Parker (1992–1997)
• Grant Show as Jake Hanson (1992–1997)
• Doug Savant as Matt Fielding (1992–1997)
• Daphne Zuniga as Jo Reynolds (1992–1996)
• Vanessa Williams as Rhonda Blair (1992–1993)
• Amy Locane as Sandy Harling (1992)
• Marcia Cross as Kimberly Shaw (1992-1993, 1994-1997)
• Laura Leighton as Sydney Andrews (1993–1997)
• Heather Locklear as Amanda Woodward (Special Guest Star 1993–1999)
• Jack Wagner as Dr. Peter Burns (1994–1999)
• Kristin Davis as Brooke Armstrong (1995–1996)
• Patrick Muldoon as Richard Hart (Special Guest Star 1995–1996)
• Brooke Langton as Samantha Reilly (1996–1998)
• Rob Estes as Kyle McBride (1996–1999)
• Lisa Rinna as Taylor McBride (1996–1998)
• Kelly Rutherford as Megan Lewis (1996–1999)
• David Charvet as Craig Field (1996–1998)
• Alyssa Milano as Jennifer Mancini (1997–1998)
• Linden Ashby as Dr. Brett "Coop" Cooper (1997–1998)
• Jamie Luner as Lexi Sterling (1997–1999)
• John Haymes Newton as Ryan McBride (1998–1999)
• Rena Sofer as Eve Cleary (Recurring Guest Star 1998–1999)

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Melrose Place episodes

Main article: Melrose Place Season Summaries

[edit] Legacy

Melrose Place's blend of melodrama, black humor, unapologetic sexuality, and shocking moments have helped the show remain relevant in the years since the show went off the air. Besides launching numerous careers (Marcia Cross and Kristin Davis in particular being the most notable actors to go on to greater fame as a result of their time on Melrose Place, with starring roles on Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City respectively), the show helped revive the careers of Doug Savant, Heather Locklear and Alyssa Milano, with Milano herself reinventing herself from tomboyish child star to adult sex symbol. Savant also now appears as a regular on Desperate Housewives.

The formula of sex and over-the-top storylines led to an ironic twist as the success of Melrose Place led to Aaron Spelling revamping 90210 as an over-the-top soap opera-style show when Melrose Place overshadowed 90210 in popularity in mid-1990s. The show also has become the standard bearer for shocking storyline twists in the prime time drama genre, with classic "shock" moments such as the villain Kimberly Shaw revealing that she wore a wig and had scars on her head from where she had brain surgery performed on her, raised the bar in terms of shocking plot twists in the prime-time soap genre.

[edit] Trivia

A street named Melrose Place actually exists, and is a branch of the longer Melrose Avenue that runs through the West Hollywood, Hollywood and the Silver Lake areas of Los Angeles. However, the street itself does not feature any apartment buildings or residences, but rather a restaurant, newsstand, and a number of upscale boutiques and salons, such as Marc Jacobs.

[edit] GALA Committee

A group of artists and Melrose Place producers formed the GALA Committee, headed by artist Mel Chin, in order to bring artworks out of galleries and into nighttime television. GALA artists designed artworks that were used as props by Melrose Place characters in the fourth and fifth seasons, often with hidden political messages:

• When Alison is pregnant, her quilt is decorated with the molecular structure of RU-486.
• A bag of Chinese take-out food is emblazoned with two opposing ideograms translated from Chinese as "Human Rights" and "Turmoil"; both terms were used by the Chinese government to justify a restriction on student protesters of June 4, 1989.
• Bottles behind the counter at Shooters bar are decorated with ads and documents chronicling the history of alcohol.
• As Alison quits D&D Advertising, a framed ad in the background features a bombed-out building. The damage to the structure is in the shape of a liquor bottle, and the words "Total Proof" appear on the poster.

Chin compared the works to viruses, symbiotic and invisible. Almost fifty of these artworks were auctioned off for charity; the actual charity show appears in a fifth-season art gallery scene. The project was also dubbed "In the Name of the Place", as well as "Uncommon Sense."

[edit] International

• In Australia, the show was shown on Network Ten. It currently airs on Arena.
• In Belgium, the show was shown on VTM.
• In Brazil, the show can be seen on Sony Entertainment Television.
• In Canada, the show was originally aired on CTV in English and TVA in French.
• In the Croatia, the show was shown on HRT-Croatian National Television.
• In the Czech Republic, the show was shown on TV Nova.
• In the Dominican Republic, the show was shown on Tele Antillas.
• In Slovakia, the show was shown on Markiza.
• In France, the show was shown on TF1.
• In Finland, the show can be seen on MTV3 and SubTV.
• In Germany, the show was shown on RTL.
• In The Netherlands, the show was shown on Veronica, currently called RTL 7
• In United Kingdom, the show was shown on Sky One, five, ftn and is currently on LivingTV.
• In Italy, the show was shown on Italia 1.
• In Lithuania, the show was shown on TV3 Lithuania.
• In Estonia, the show was shown on TV3.
• In Hungary, the show was shown on HBO.
• In Ireland, the show was shown on RTÉ.
• In Denmark, the show can be seen on TV 2.
• In Latin America, the show can be seen on Sony Entertainment Television.
• In Chile, the show can be seen on Mega
• In Macedonia, the show was shown on Sitel
• In New Zealand, the show was seen on both TV2 and later, TV3 and can now be seen on Prime.
• In South Africa, the show was seen on SABC 3.
• In Spain, the show was seen on Telecinco, Canal COSMO and later on Cuatro.
• In Sweden, the show was originally shown on TV3, later on TV4 and can currently be seen on TV400.
• In Poland, the show was seen on both TVN and TVN Siedem (TVN7)
• In Iceland, the show can be seen on SkjárEinn
• In Norway, the show was shown on TV3. It currently airs on TV2 Zebra.
• In the Philippines, the show was shown on ABS-CBN.
• In Serbia, during the 1990s the show originally aired weekly on state television RTS for a period of time, as well as sporadically on private channel RTV Palma. However, the TV Palma airing was highly controversial as it was conducted without an official licence. The show was presented in its entirety for the first time in 2004 and 2005 when it aired daily in an afternoon slot on RTV Pink.
• In Greece the show was shown on ANT1.

[edit] DVD releases

Paramount Home Entertainment released Melrose Place Season 1' on Region 1 DVD on November 7, 2006. A double-set with the first season of Beverly Hills 90210 was also released. It is expected that the remaining 5 seasons will be released soon.

Season 2 will be available on DVD (Regions 1, 2 and 4) in May 2007.

DVD cover	DVD Name	Ep #	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4	Addditional features
	The Complete First Season	32	November 7, 2006	November 13, 2006	November 2, 2006	Season 1 episode recaps, Mini Featurettes.
	The Complete Second Season	32	May 1, 2007	14 May 2007	3 May 2007

• Music has been changed for the home entertainment version.

[edit] External links

• Melrose Place - Swedish fansite
• SOAPnet MP Page
• Melrose Place at the Internet Movie Database
• "In the Name of the Place"
• (French) Melrose Place News
• All about Melrose Place -- Spanish Blog